Country may be home to as many as 13,000 bears, the highest total by far in Europe outside Russia
Romania may be home to as many as 13,000 brown bears, almost twice as many as previously thought, the country’s forestry research institute has said, as officials promised new laws to allow communities to deal with “crisis bear situations”.
The institute’s study of 25 counties in the Carpathian mountains was the first to use DNA samples from material such as faeces and hair. Previous estimates based on prints and sightings put the bear population at fewer than 8,000.
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Breaking Waves: Ocean News
04/16/2025 - 06:32
04/16/2025 - 06:28
Researchers say urgent action needed to inform people about risks of heatwave temperatures and adapt homes
The number of UK homes overheating in summer quadrupled to 80% over the past decade, according to a study, with experts calling the situation a crisis.
Heat already kills thousands of people each year in the UK and the toll will rise as the climate crisis intensifies. Urgent action is needed both to inform people on how to cope with high temperatures and to adapt homes, which are largely designed to keep heat in during the winter, the researchers said.
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04/16/2025 - 05:40
Exclusive: Ancient oaks ‘as precious as stately homes’ could receive stronger legal safeguards under new proposals
Ancient and culturally important trees in England could be given legal protections under plans set out in a UK government-commissioned report.
Sentencing guidelines would be changed so those who destroy important trees would face tougher criminal penalties. Additionally, a database of such trees would be drawn up and they could be given automatic protections, with the current system of tree preservation orders strengthened to accommodate this.
In 2020, the 300-year-old Hunningham Oak near Leamington was felled to make way for infrastructure projects.
In 2021, the Happy Man tree in Hackney, which the previous year had won the Woodland Trust’s tree of the year contest, was felled to make way for housing development.
In 2022, a 600-year-old oak was felled in Bretton, Peterborough, which reportedly caused structural damage to nearby property.
In 2023, 16 ancient lime trees on The Walks in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, were felled to make way for a dual carriageway.
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04/16/2025 - 05:00
Cuts to disaster agency and deregulation of fossil fuels, plus rise of water-guzzling datacentres, highlighted in new report
The Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to the federal climate disaster agency – and the full-throttle deregulation of fossil fuels and water-guzzling datacentres – could prove catastrophic for America’s endangered rivers, threatening the food, water and livelihoods of millions of people, according to a new report.
American Rivers’ annual most-endangered rivers list lays bare a myriad of human-made threats including floods, drought and other extreme weather events driven by the climate crisis, as well as industrial pollution and poor river management – all of which Trump’s regulatory rollbacks will almost inevitably make worse.
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04/16/2025 - 02:58
Consecutive and severe bleaching is ‘fundamentally changing’ nature of reef, the International Coral Reef Society says
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The Great Barrier Reef was hit by a sixth widespread coral bleaching event since 2016 this summer – the second time the world’s biggest coral reef has seen the phenomenon strike in back-to-back years – according to government authorities.
Scientists and conservationists reacted with dismay that widespread bleaching – driven by global heating – was becoming normalised, with one saying Australia’s next term of government may be the natural wonder’s last shot at survival.
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04/16/2025 - 01:08
Exclusive: Power outages in major cities would help build opposition to climate policies, Colin Boyce tells podcast
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The Coalition MP Colin Boyce says he believes the way to turn voters against renewable energy is to “let Rome burn for a while” and allow power blackouts to occur in major cities.
Guardian Australia reported on Wednesday that Boyce had described blackouts as a “big political opportunity” at a meeting of climate science deniers in late 2023.
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04/16/2025 - 01:01
Juliette Pavy’s photographs of eco expeditions bring an element of lyrical storytelling to the global impact of invisible pollutants, from the Mediterranean to the Arctic
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04/16/2025 - 01:00
In one Nepali village, the resident rhinos are a conservation success story and attract thousands of visitors, but attacks on humans are on the rise
“I can’t talk now, I’m in hospital,” Ram Kumar Aryal says when he picks up the phone. “Someone has been attacked by one of the rhinos.” Every few months, Aryal – who is one of the architects of Nepal’s celebrated rhino conservation programme – ends up in one of the hospitals around Chitwan national park to respond to a rhino attack. This time, three women had been injured earlier that afternoon by a female rhino outside Laukhani village in the park’s buffer zone.
The hospital had bandaged up their fractured legs and ribs and treated the bites on their hips and knees. “Normally rhinos are vegetarian, but they use their incisors for attacks,” says Aryal. Those incisors can grow to three inches long.
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04/16/2025 - 01:00
Exclusive: Absence of world’s biggest clean energy producer will be welcomed by US pushing oil and gas exports
China is to snub a major UK summit on energy security next week, the Guardian has learned, amid a growing row over the country’s involvement in UK infrastructure projects.
The US will send a senior White House official to the 60-country summit, to be co-hosted with the International Energy Agency. Leading oil and gas companies are also invited, along with big technology businesses, and petrostates including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.
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04/16/2025 - 00:00
Seeds can germinate having been buried in sediments of ‘ghost ponds’ for thousands of years
Ghosts of the ice age are being resurrected in Norfolk. When the ice sheets retreated at the end of the last ice age, mounds of ice called pingos remained underground until they thawed and the soil slumped, leaving behind shallow hollows that filled with water.
These turned into swampy wetland habitats rich in plants and wildlife and Breckland, in Norfolk, became pocked with hundreds of these pingo pools, although many of them were later filled in for farmland and became lost.
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